the_taliban_shuffle_-_kim_barker

trip overseas, in early 2002, I made countless mistakes. I ordered sushi
from the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which resembled dorsal ns on a
bed of rice and laid me up for days. I sneaked into the forbidden tribal
areas of Pakistan with a xer who seemed more interested in scoring
hash than in working and called me “princess” when I complained. And
then, when I ew to Kabul the rst time, I forgot my cash. That was a
major lesson: In a war zone, there are no ATMs.
In the beginning, I was a ll-in correspondent, spending most of my
time in Chicago, occasionally dispatched to some random country. I
ew to Indonesia to write a vague story about Islam, I covered a
devastating earthquake and parliamentary elections in Iran, I spent the
invasion of Iraq rambling around Afghanistan with Farouq. But I had
caught the bug. What better job could there be than working halfway
around the world from my bosses, than being paid to travel? When our
South Asia correspondent moved to Italy in early 2004, I applied for
her old job, based in India. I took it before even telling my boyfriend
about the oer. Not a good sign about the priority of our relationship
of almost two years, but Chris still volunteered to move overseas with
me later in the year. So my life plan was locked up—I was going to be
a swashbuckling foreign correspondent, especially so in South Asia,
where at ve foot ten, I towered over most of the populace. My
boyfriend would perfect his comedy script about killer squirrels.
As soon as I ew into India that June, I called Farouq. He had news:
He was getting married. He was not marrying his cousin, as is usually
the case in Afghanistan, but his family still picked out his future bride,
which is almost always the case in Afghanistan. Luckily, after the two
were introduced, they fell for each other.
“You have to come,” he told me. “It’s a love marriage.”
That gave me an excuse to go back, which, after arriving in India,
land of quick hands and sharp elbows, I desperately wanted. Even
though New Delhi would be my home base, Afghanistan felt more like
home than anywhere else in the region. I knew why. Afghanistan
seemed familiar. It had jagged blue-and-purple mountains, big skies,
and bearded men in pickup trucks stocked with guns and hate for the
government. It was like Montana—just on dierent drugs. So with a list
of story ideas and a verbal wedding invite, I ew back to Kabul, now a
city of about three or four million, bursting at its muddy seams with